Red Star Rising (22 page)

“It’s true.”

Charlie spread his hands, palms upward, in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s an impossible situation. And one I can’t do anything about.”

“You could authorize our attendance.”

“Our?” queried Charlie, pedantically.

“Myself and Sergei Romanovich. This is supposed to be a joint investigation. If we are not publicly there, it amounts to a positive accusation and will be interpreted as such.”

The man was genuinely concerned at the personal, professional damage of his being excluded, Charlie suddenly decided, warmed by the further, unnecessary recognition that everyone at their level lived at the receiving end of the shit sluice. With that reflection came another, far more important awareness. This encounter wouldn’t be taking place if the Russians had subjected his phony forensic material to DNA testing. Charlie said, “Surely it won’t be a personal accusation against you and Sergei Romanovich?”

“There needs to be a Russian presence,” insisted Guzov, giving Charlie the cosmetically salvaging cooperation opening he’d never anticipated getting.

“I’m not handling the attendance applications,” said Charlie. “But the conference is sure to be covered in its entirety by Russian television. A full tape—not an edited transmission version—will provide you with every question and every answer. I also undertake to make available the embassy film and audio recordings.”

It was Guzov who gestured for more drinks before sourly looking sideways. “The purpose of press conferences is to generate public response. What’s your undertaking about that?”

“Responses will be made available, along with everything else,” replied Charlie, expecting the demand. For you to chase the chaff behind Robertson’s crew, Charlie thought.

Guzov looked back into his drink. “I was forbidden from making this sort of approach.”

“Why did you?” asked Charlie, astonished that Guzov was shoveling the special relationship, professional-to-professional crap.

“It was a mistake to try,” admitted the Russian.

“I’ve given you every possible undertaking that I can. There isn’t any more.” Charlie had turned more fully into the bar for the conversation with the Russian and got an impression—which was all it was, the barest flicker of a face, of a person—at the entrance to the bar, which he imagined to be Natalia.

“Things aren’t as they seem,” declared the Russian.

“I don’t understand,” said Charlie, dismissing the distraction.

“And I can’t explain.”

“That’s even more difficult to understand.”

“I know.”

Charlie gestured for more drinks but Guzov covered his glass with his hand. “Can we meet, officially, tomorrow?”

“Of course,” agreed Charlie.

“Petrovka, at noon?”

“I’ll be there.” For what? wondered Charlie, deciding not to ask, his mind still held by the split-second image of Natalia, knowing that was all—the only thing—it could have been, a mental trick.

It was an additional ten minutes, the time it took him to finish his drink and get to his suite floor, before Charlie learned, after the briefest of alarms, that it was nothing of the sort.

It was not a shifting sound or the faintest breathing but instinct alone and Charlie stopped his hand short of the light switch, knowing at once there was someone already in the room. And when the single sidelight clicked on it was not he who caused it
but the momentarily still unseen intruder who said, “Close the door,” and Charlie finally knew who it was.

“You frightened me,” he said.

“Guzov frightened me.” Natalia moved from the shadows, for Charlie to see her at last. She was wearing a hat that hid her hair and a dark, tightly belted raincoat.

“You know him?”

“He was once my section leader.”

“I only just saw you; convinced myself it was a mirage. Guzov didn’t see you. But there were others in the bar who must have alerted him I was there. And who might have seen you.”

“There was no one else who could have recognized me.”

There was no guarantee of that, Charlie knew. “You shouldn’t have taken this risk.”

“I wasn’t getting any reply at your embassy number and couldn’t leave a message someone else might have accessed. I didn’t want to leave things as they are.”

“Do you want more lights?” asked Charlie, giving himself time to analyze what she’d said.

“No,” Natalia refused, shortly. “It shouldn’t have happened, in the park. I didn’t know . . . didn’t mean . . .”

Charlie at last moved farther into the room, standing directly opposite Natalia. “Who is he?”

“His name is Karakov. Igor Anatolivich Karakov.”

“How long?”

Natalia shrugged. “Six months, maybe seven.”

“Are you together?”

Natalia frowned. “Not living together, no. It would confuse Sasha.”

“What have you told him about her?”

“He knows I am married but separated. But nothing about you, obviously.”

“It is serious?”

“I think so.”

“What do you want me to do?” The usual ordinary, inadequate words.

“I don’t know. I never thought you’d come back; didn’t expect ever to see you again. I was going to write, try to explain. I actually tried to write but nothing sounded as I wanted it to.”

“I’ll do whatever you want . . . I mean—”

“I told you I don’t know what I want,” she stopped him.

“It’s important that you know . . . for me to tell you.”

“What were you going to do . . . about the park, I mean?”

“Call you. Ask to meet, to talk like this. I was going to do it tonight but Guzov arrived.”

“I’m sorry . . . very sorry . . . that it happened as it did,” she said.

“You explained.”

“He’s a teacher, at Sasha’s school. That’s how we met. He was one of the escorts on her trip.”

“She seemed fond of him. Comfortable.”

“He’s very kind.”

“Is he married?”

“No.”

Why should he simply give up? Charlie abruptly asked himself. “Do you love him?”

“I don’t . . .” started Natalia, but she stopped, appearing to change her mind. “It would be easy to.”

He’d lost her, Charlie decided, but then he’d already come to that conclusion. “It seems to make everything pretty clear.”

“I’m not sure that it does,” said Natalia. “You haven’t told me how you feel.”

Charlie curbed the instant reply, not wanting it to degenerate into an argument. “I thought I had. I understand what has happened: it was almost inevitable that it
would
happen, because of how we are . . . how we’ve been . . . but—”

“What about you?” Natalia broke in. “Have you got anyone?”

“No. But I don’t think that comes into it . . . not into what you’ve got to decide. Which I guess you’ve already decided.”

“I haven’t decided anything yet!” said Natalia, her voice angry for the first time. “I’m going around in circles, which I have been ever since you came back.”

“I don’t see . . . can’t think . . . that there’s anything else I can do to help . . . to say . . .”

“Don’t call . . . not for a few days . . .”

“I’m worried you might have been recognized.”

“Guzov was the only danger.”

“Be very careful.”

“I have worked in the field, don’t forget. How do you think I got in here, to be waiting for you?”

And I outmaneuvered you twice, thought Charlie. “Let the move come from me. Don’t come anywhere near here again. Guzov is going to pack this hotel with eyes and ears: probably already has.” It was conceivable the man would even have live microphones in the suite, if he’d discovered the room transfer. He’d have to check his intruder traps when she’d gone.

“Not for a few days,” Natalia repeated.

“I’ll run hare,” Charlie announced. “Don’t leave here for thirty minutes after me. I’ll have one more drink in the bar, for them to get organized and in position. I’ll leave by the main exit, going right toward Sverdlova Square and the Bolshoi. You go through Red Square, in the opposite direction.”

“You really sure all this is necessary?”

“I wouldn’t be suggesting it if I weren’t.”

Charlie isolated the bored-looking man in a lobby armchair, directly facing the elevator that he left and knew he was right when the same man, no longer bored, came into the bar behind him within minutes, now with a dark-haired woman whom he’d earlier decided to be one of the working girls and who took the most obvious table closest to the door. Charlie chose Armenian brandy and talked about a nightcap as he ordered it, using the bar clock to count off the time schedule he’d given Natalia. The initial team remained at their table when Charlie left but there were three replacements, a couple and a woman by herself, close behind when he went out through the main entrance. Sidelights immediately went on a parked car outside. Charlie paused, as if undecided in which direction to walk. He identified the solitary woman and the slowly cruising car as he entered the square, unhurriedly
strolling passed the Metropol Hotel, pausing again as if undecided to enter before continuing on to study the program offerings outside the brightly illuminated theater. He used every pause and halt to monitor the time, not turning back toward the Savoy until a full twenty minutes had elapsed beyond the time he’d given Natalia to leave. All his intruder traps were in place and undisturbed when he checked them but Charlie wasn’t reassured that the rooms remained untouched.

But then, he reminded himself, he had nothing whatsoever about the evening to be reassured about.

By the time Charlie reached the embassy the following morning, just after nine, there had been 138 press conference applications, 26 of them from television companies, which included every Russian channel, all American, British, and satellite majors, and every leading European national and commercial outlet. There were three television requests among the nine Japanese submissions. A minor conference room within the main embassy building had to be made available for Robertson and his team, two of whom were additionally assigned permanently to the basement communications room transmitting accreditation photographs, names, and identification documentation of every Russian journalist, photographer, cameraman, and technician to London for vetting by MI6, which called in exchange cooperation from CIA record duplication. That second check duplication, under similar cooperation agreements, was extended to the external intelligence agencies of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.

So widespread was the attempted trawl that media leaks were inevitable. The first came from Paris, quickly followed by a longer and more detailed account in
The New York Times
and
Washington Post. Liberation,
in Paris, wrongly reported that two agents from the external KGB successor, the
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki,
had been discovered among the applications, which London refused to confirm or deny. Because of the varying time differences
throughout the world, Moscow’s positive denial was the initial lead item in more than fifty European, American, and Asian daytime radio and television news bulletins.

Associated Press was the first international news agency to create a composite file of the global reaction, which Halliday brought into the embassy hall in which Charlie stood with Robertson, watching the applications in the process of being sorted into their security level checks.

Robertson said, “I wasn’t told London was going to go into this degree of duplication, and I don’t believe anyone anticipated this sort of result. This could turn the conference itself into an anticlimax if you don’t have enough to say.”

Charlie’s concern had already gone way beyond that awareness, to the fear that it might diminish the all important public response. “It wasn’t properly thought through.”

“How many times have I heard those precise words at the beginning of a disaster assessment?” said Halliday, whose in-house MI6 embassy records were the first to be consulted for application comparison, before their onward submission to London.

“It’s a fuck-up before it even gets started,” judged Robertson.

“Only if I allow it to be,” said Charlie.

“There are two logical interpretations from all this,” speculated Robertson. “One is that the Russians gained something of enormous importance from the embassy bugging. The other is that it’s the dead man who’s important. You going to be able to answer either of those questions?”

Those weren’t the priorities in Charlie’s mind at that moment. In little more than an hour, he had to confront Guzov and God knew who else and whatever demands they might make. One uncertainty prompted another. Surely he wasn’t being set up in some way! He couldn’t see how but then he wouldn’t—shouldn’t—be able to. It was on London’s orders that everything had been so abruptly turned on its head with the involvement of Robertson and Fish, and he hadn’t expected that, either. Where was Fish? came another question. “I think I can do enough to ensure it won’t turn into a disaster assessment.”

“Which I’m glad I’m not going to be part of if you’re wrong,” said the MI6
rezident
.

“I won’t be,” insisted Charlie, thinking that Halliday was the sort of man he’d always want to have in front rather than behind him.